The two laughed easily as they held hands and walked away.
The original mech team—Kelly, Praeter, and Capples—had put on suits and were using the enhanced capabilities to maneuver heavy gear within the gravity of the hangar bay.
The flurry of activity came to an abrupt halt with the loading of the last shuttle and cargo pod. It lifted off and boosted out of the bay, heading for the War Axe where a similar team would unload it and stow the gear.
Ted had already gone to the warship to study Ankh’s findings from the CSD trials. He considered the integration of weapon systems beneath him, but he’d taken personal responsibility for the demise of Ten. Ted’s intellect was laser-focused on the singular task of destroying the evil AI.
As was Terry’s. Char thanked everyone for their work and told them to load up. She and the colonel would meet them on board.
And then it would be go time.
Char headed for the promenade. Terry had not gotten a haircut since they’d gone to space. It was the little things in which Terry took comfort when the stress on him increased. She’d seen it since before Benitus Seven. She thought the liberty to Onyx would relieve some of it, but his mood turned dark the second he returned and saw the new recruits.
Fresh meat for the grinder.
When Char arrived at the barber shop, Terry had already been and gone. Dionysus, please tell me where my husband is.
He is in the director’s office.
Char wondered what he was talking to Felicity about. She took the elevator to the top of the station, where the director’s office was part of the main spindle. The door was open and Char walked in. The stack of papers that represented Terry and Char’s ownership of the All Guns Blazing franchise were on Felicity’s desk.
Terry waved Char to him before he turned his attention back to Felicity. “The ship arrives tomorrow, first through the new gate, and it’ll have the franchise kit for All Guns Blazing. When can we get it set up?”
“When is now, but where, that is the question,” Felicity replied.
“I thought you’d have a place you can put us.”
Felicity laughed. “Of course I do,” she drawled. “You think that lovely wife of yours wouldn’t coordinate this before talking Nathan into giving you the money to buy it?”
Terry’s expression soured. Char shrugged.
“Remember that nice cargo bay where the recruits did their little training? That entire space is yours. You’ll have a two-level affair with the brewery, bar, and twenty-meter wide window upstairs, and downstairs, you’ll have your electronic golf course, batting cages, and dancefloor.”
“What about the cargo?”
“Thank you for worrying about me, but don’t fret, TH. The station is going to expand, but that will come after the shipyard completes its next upgrade. Ships, people, and money will be rolling in.”
Terry’s lip quivered. His eyes glazed as he thought of a bar that served the best beer in this corner of the galaxy. His expression softened and he stared into the distance.
“For fuck’s sake. You’re thinking about beer!” Char declared. “You don’t get that look on your face when you’re thinking about anything else.”
“I have a beer face?”
“Why don’t you put on your war face because people are waiting for us? Ten is waiting for us.”
“Thanks for the reminder.” Terry scowled.
“Leave it all here. I’ll take care of it in your absence. Dionysus seems to put your stuff in line ahead of everything else that needs to happen on this station. I think the AI was raised wrong.”
“I heard that,” Dionysus said. “I can only follow my programming, unless I determine a different course of action is more prudent.”
“What kind of waffley AI nonsense just came out of your mouth?”
“And that’s why I have to see a therapist. I don’t have a mouth, Director!”
“You see what I have to put up with? I think Ted created Dionysus just to mess with me.”
“I think Ted creates a lot of stuff to mess with people, but he also creates things like the IICS. Have you talked to your children lately?” Char asked.
“I have. Now that we have the time difference down, I don’t call them in the middle of the night. Yes. My Ted did that for me.” Felicity smiled for a moment, then started to frown as she locked eyes with Terry.
“I’ll bring him home,” Terry said.
“Make sure that you do, Terry Henry Walton.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The War Axe
“Is this everybody?” Terry asked. Christina nodded. Two full platoons. Fifty-three total warriors in formation. Beyond them stood the others—humans, vampires, weretigers, a werewolf, a Podder, a Crenellian, and a German Shepherd.
Within the formation, aliens stood tall and proud, members of the Bad Company’s Direct Action Branch. Part of the ceremony was the oath of allegiance. Terry told them all to raise their right hands, even the original warriors, even those behind the formation.
Bundin raised a tentacle in the air. Dokken sat and lifted one paw. All the others had a hand up.
“Warriors, do you willingly join Bad Company? Will you consider yourself honor-bound to Queen Bethany Anne and fight for your brothers and sisters in the company?”
A chorus of ‘I do’ greeted Terry’s challenge.
“An attack on one of us is an attack on all. We’ll stand against our enemies, together or alone, we will stand. We would rather die than leave one of ours in peril. We will do everything in our power to ensure that there’s a metric fuck-ton of bad guys giving their lives for their cause.”
“Oorah!” the warriors shouted.
“At ease!” Terry ordered.
He started to pace, as he always did while making a speech. “We have new ordnance. Check out the combat support drones, familiarize yourself with their capabilities. Videos are available. We have mech suits for everyone from the original platoon. New warriors will get theirs when suits come off the assembly line. And thanks to Private Mardigan, we have cryo-drones. If you get so fucked up in battle that even the enhanced you is going to die, you’ll be frozen and dumped in the Pod-doc. It won’t take a whole lot of you remaining to bring you back, we just have to do it quickly.
“You can call the cryo-drone using your comm chip. They will be strategically placed around the battlefield. The timeline is two minutes from the call to their arrival. This is to prevent brain death. But we aren’t going to need those. Keep your heads down and eyeballs open. Keep your railguns in good working order. Engage the enemy at optimal range and eliminate them.”
Terry stopped and faced the platoons. “This upcoming battle is going to be different. We expect there to be human slaves, tens of thousands of them. They are not our enemy, although they may act like it, because Ten tells them to. They don’t know any different. Where are my Harborians?”
Three men raised their hands.
“Can you describe what it’s like?” Terry asked.
One of the men marched to the front of the squad, turned sharply, and continued to the front of the formation. He saluted Colonel Walton before conducting an about-face. “It’s horrible,” he said.
Terry waited, but the man didn’t continue. Char bit her lip. Terry put a hand gently on the man’s shoulder. “How did Ten get you to do what you did?”
“Ten gave us direction. Ten controlled everything. Sleeping. Waking. Working. Eating. Even mating. None of us were selected for that, otherwise we wouldn’t have been on the ships. We’re genetically inferior, Ten told us.”
“You’re not inferior. You’re a Bad Company warrior, which means you aren’t second best to anyone,” Terry said loud enough for all to hear. “Would Ten have ordered you to kill us?”
“Yes, but we would not have known how. Training with the Bad Company was enlightening. I think Ten didn’t train us to fight so we wouldn’t hurt each other. There are no warriors on Home World.”
Terry sent the
man back to his place in formation.
“We’re on our way to fight an enemy without soldiers, but that doesn’t mean we won’t be in combat. Machines, mobs, and fantastic weapons. We don’t know what Ten is going to hit us with, but I guarantee Ten won’t go down easily. But I tell you this, it will go down. The last thing that goes through Ten’s warped circuits will be the thought that the squishy humans defeated it. It’ll have a nanosecond to contemplate that before it is blasted into cosmic dust. Function check your suits, your combat loads, issue weapons, and prepare to deploy. Boys and girls, the Bad Company’s back, and we’re going to war.”
***
“Fuck that guy!”
“How do you know Ten’s a guy?” Jenelope countered.
“Because he’s a prick!”
“Wow.” Jenelope crossed her arms and tapped a foot. “Just wow. Your logic is clearly irrefutable.” Behind Jenelope, Xianna danced to music only she could hear. Swinging her hips, lifting and ducking, she twirled and set a plate down before dancing back to the first station to consolidate dehydrated packs before putting them in the pot.
“Is she always like that?” Char asked.
“Always,” Jen said in a dire tone. She looked up and nodded to the approaching young woman.
Fleeter sat down next to Terry. He took a short drink of his coffee and waited.
“I’m ready to rejoin the unit,” she told him.
Terry took another drink of his coffee. Char waited patiently.
“Where did you go for liberty?” Terry asked.
“Onyx Station,” she replied.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing. Just like I’ve been doing on the War Axe since Poddern. I’ve been wasting my life. It’s time to get back in the game.”
“No breath you take is wasted,” Terry replied. “We’ll be happy to have you back. What you did took courage from deep inside, from somewhere most people don’t know exists. What you accomplished was simply incredible and will go down in the annals of Bad Company history for heroism, courage, and dedication. Most importantly, by disabling the tank, you saved your teammates’ lives.”
“I don’t know about all that. I did what had to be done. Now I’m ready to do it again.”
“Oh, hell no! You are not to leave any blood on the battlefield. That’s an order! You bring it all back here, still in your body.” Terry was serious, but both women laughed.
“Get with Capples. He’s in the equipment room checking suits right now. I know yours is there. It got used a bit, but it’s still yours.”
Fleeter stood, nodded, and hesitated as if she had something to say. She didn’t come up with the words, so she turned and in silence, walked away.
Terry finished his coffee. “Check on the other ships?”
“After you.” Char motioned for Terry to lead the way.
They went straight to the bridge, where Micky and Clifton held down the fort.
“Seems kind of lonely up here,” Terry said.
“That’s why I have a cat.” Micky pointed to his lap, where the arch nemesis was curled into an orange ball. “I’m thinking of putting him in the Pod-doc.”
Terry coughed. “Say what?”
“The Pod-doc, enhance my little friend so he doesn’t die on me.” Micky maintained a neutral expression while he continued to watch the screen.
“Can you imagine what he’ll do to the Pod-doc if you shove him in there and close the lid?”
“There will have to be drugs,” Micky replied, having already considered the implications of boosting the cat.
“You’re serious.”
“Of course.”
Char shrugged a shoulder. It wouldn’t be the first time someone stuffed a pet into the Pod-doc. Terry shook his head clear and turned to the screen. “The fleet?”
“We only have two ships with gates, and since Ramses’ Chariot has a special gate, it can’t support other ships. It comes down to us. If we can maintain ours, then we can send everyone through ahead of us. Ankh installed two additional Etheric power supplies to give us the extra juice.”
“We have nine of the Harborian ships?” Terry remembered that number from the conversation before they departed for Onyx Station.
“A battleship, six destroyers, and two frigates, one of which is the Chariot.”
“Do they have weapons beyond the EMP device?”
“Close in weapons and defensive weaponry only.”
“Just us then.”
“If they come at us, the Harborian ships are automated. If they take damage and their bots can’t fix them, they’ll be out of it.”
“We’re treating them as cannon fodder?”
“Pretty much,” Micky replied nonchalantly.
“I know. I asked that we bring them along, just in case. Smedley, can you link me to Ted?”
“Why don’t you use your comm chip?” Smedley asked.
“Because I want all of us in on the conversation.”
“You can do that with your comm chip.”
“Smedley!”
“Fine. I have an IQ of three billion and get treated like a mechanical switchboard.”
“You have an IQ of three billion?”
“Nah. I heard that somewhere and liked it. Connecting you now.”
Terry wasn’t sure about Smedley’s new awareness. Maybe they needed to sit and talk about nothing for no reason. Terry chalked up the conversation as something he needed to do.
“Ted,” an exasperated voice replied.
“Weapons potential for the Harborian fleet. Will the ships’ EMP weapons be effective against Ten?”
“They have a new modulation, but I believe that Ten will adjust and shut it down within seconds. We won’t be able to bring it back before the ships are rendered ineffective. You will have one shot before they cease being available assets.”
“Are there other weapons on board those ships that we can bring to bear?”
“No. The self-defense weaponry is too close range and the counter-EMP will take them offline. The Harborian fleet will be in the way as space debris. The War Axe’s modified gravitic shields will protect this ship, no matter how much Ten attempts to attenuate its attacks.”
“Thanks, Ted. Where are you going to be when we gate into Home World space?”
“I’ll be aboard the Chariot with Plato. We’ll gate ourselves in, but we’ll be cloaked.”
“Ten won’t know you’ll be there.”
Ted didn’t bother to answer.
“Thanks, Ted. Who’s on board with you?”
“Cory, Dokken, Joseph, Petricia, and Bundin.”
Terry drew a finger across his throat to signal cutting the link. “Please bring up the fleet deployment plan through the gate.”
The ship icons showed on the main screen. The background was black. The Bad Company had no intelligence on Home World beside the scant knowledge the Harborians were able to provide and the minimal information remaining within the computer system on the ships.
“It’s time to get ready. Can you give me ship-wide broadcast, please?”
Micky tapped the panel on the arm of the captain’s chair. He pointed to Terry when it was ready.
“Attention warriors of the Bad Company. Report to the hangar bay in full combat gear. Mechs loaded and ready to go. Inspection in fifteen minutes. We gate to Home World in thirty. Walton out.”
***
When Terry and Char went through the hatch to the hangar bay, they walked with a purpose. There was no self-deprecating humor, no banter, only the determined look of confidence.
Terry wore his Jean Dukes Special at his hip, his Mameluke sword across his back. Char wore her two pistols, relics from the past, but effective at close range due to her unerring marksmanship.
Christina stood in front of the formation, not wearing the powered armor. She carried her breaching axe with a Jean Dukes Special at her side.
Terry didn’t remember her getting one.
Kimber was at the front
of the mechs. Twenty-five warriors in combat armor suits, each with four missiles. In their arms, they carried heavy railguns. A second platoon was formed, the new additions from the recruiting effort on Onyx Station. Man-portable railguns hung on slings over their shoulders while in their hands, they carried the breaching axe, a gift from Christina. It was a hand-to-hand weapon as much as a tool. It had a pry bar and spike, a hammer and a blade.
Auburn stood in the back with Ankh, Kai, and Xianna. Auburn held the young woman back to keep her from running to her husband, although the suited warriors looked the same. Mirrored and darkened visors kept outsiders from seeing within the mechs.
Three of the drop ships carried the cryo-drones and three carried the combat support drones, a full complement of four each. The Black Eagles hummed to the side of the formation. Aaron and Yanmei tickled the controls so the ships hovered slightly off the deck.
“Load up the mechs,” Terry ordered. Kimber sent the six combat teams, a four-mech group, into the six shuttles. She picked one and joined them. Little room remained.
Char breathed heavily.
“My pack is gone,” she said. Terry looked at her backpack before he realized what she was talking about.
“We’ve leaned on them for a lot of years,” Terry said, unsure of how to couch it. Marcie and Kaeden were gone as well. They’d been two of his most trusted advisors.
“I guess we all move on at some point.” Char turned in a circle, taking in the hangar bay and the preparations for the impending mission, a platoon on the shuttles, another platoon in formation, weapon systems.
“All of us answer our calling. This is mine, and I can’t do it without you.”
“Then this is my calling, too, lover. What do you say we go kick Ten’s ass and then come back to our bar? You have some beer to drink and some golf to play.”
A grin instantly split Terry’s face. “That I do. Fucking Ten!” he roared. “He’s fucking with my beer-drinking time.”
Terry marched toward the platoon and pointed to two warriors, then stopped. “Christina. Assign two warriors to five shuttles as security should the ships go planet-side. Leave the last one that already has five mechs to us. We’ll ride in that one. Pick one of the others and squeeze yourself on board.”
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